What you are about to see is perhaps the most beautiful automobile ever created. It has the presence of an Italian supermodel and the power of a well seasoned prize fighter. This is the 1969 Lamborghini Miura S, and with its mid-mounted V12, scrape-the-ground stance and symphonic exhaust note, it may just be the world’s most perfect automobile.
Source: JayLenosGarage.com
So you own an HTC One and you’re a tad jealous of the Drama Shot feature on the Galaxy S 4. No worries because you can do the same thing on your HTC One by utilizing the Sequence Shot feature, but there is some good news and bad news. The good news is that as long as you’re using Zoe, you can make your Sequence Shot anytime you want. With the Galaxy S 4, you have to know that you want to take a Drama Shot before you take the photo. Not only that, you need to make your edits before you can take any other pictures. The results are cool, but a very cumbersome feature. With HTC’s use of Zoe, you can play around with your sequence shot after you get home or even weeks later as long as the Zoe is still on your phone. Now the bad news: You won’t get as many frames as the Galaxy S 4 since the S 4 takes 100 frames over four seconds, while HTC Zoe grabs only 20 frames for 3 seconds. Still, you can get a pretty good looking Drama Shot Sequence Shot, so hit the break to find out how it’s done.
All you need to do is open any Zoe that might feature images for a good Sequence Shot such as someone running or dancing. You want to make sure that the only thing moving is the person that you want to depict for this effect. Make sure to move the slider on the Zoe to after the last movement takes place. Then tap Edit, then Retouch, then Sequence Shot (lower left). After it processes, you will see a bunch of images that you can select or deselect. Obviously the ones that are selected will appear in the final photo. After you are happy with the result, tap Done. At this point you will be given an opportunity for further editing like skin smoothing and eye brightening, but most of those won’t pertain. Now hit the three dot menu at the top right and select Save or Save & Share. Tapping Save will save the image to your gallery and will also be part of the same event that your original Zoe is in. If you tap Save & Share, it will save the image the same way, but you will also be given an opportunity to share it to Facebook, Dropbox, Gmail, Google+, and more.
Sometimes it’s easier to see how it’s done so that is why I put together this video showing you.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Sequence Shot might be HTC’s best kept secret regarding their camera software and is something that most people don’t know they can do. Hopefully this guide helped you make a really cool sequence image. Be sure to check out our other HTC One guides.
Come comment on this article: How to make a Drama Shot or Sequence Shot on the HTC One
The same sensor technology used to track performance of elite athletes and monitor vital signs during childbirth is taking a turn as a tool for fighting drug abuse.
At the American Telemedicine Association conference this week, a psychologist at the Baylor College of Medicine described how he’s using the Zephyr BioHarness wireless vital signals monitor to track cardiovascular and respiratory changes in cocaine users, according to Mobihealth News.
Developed for the military, first responders and athletes, the BioHarness is a chest strap with a battery-powered sensor that monitors a person’s heart rate, breathing rate and other vital signs.
At Baylor, Dr. Jin Ho Yoon is reportedly leading an NIH-funded trial using the BioHarness to see how well it can measure changes in heart and lung function when people are exposed to cocaine. According to Mobihealth, as part of the trial, volunteers who had been addicted to cocaine were administered low-dosage intravenous cocaine in hospital beds, while a control group received saline solution. Among those exposed to the drug, the monitor detected sharp increases in heart rates and breathing rates.
That the device detected an increase in those indicators isn’t as significant as the finding that the monitor could generate more data and at a lower price than typical hospital monitors – and that it could work remotely to monitor people recently discharged from care facilities to make sure that they don’t relapse into abuse. (Although Mobihealth suggests that the battery life would need to be extended for effective remote monitoring.)
Cocaine abuse represents just a small percentage of all illicit drug use, but it leads to more than 40 percent of emergency visits related to overdoses from street drugs, Dr. Yoon reportedly told the conference. And, he plans to continue studies with the BioHarness to determine whether it has applications for helping people to quit smoking and fight obesity.
As we’ve reported previously, sensor technology is a hot area in digital health these days, with companies receiving funding for devices that track everything from sleep disorders to head impacts to medication adherence.
When it comes to using sensors to detect and treat substance abuse, the BioHarness isn’t the only device psychologists are studying. The iHeal, developed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, is a wristband that detects changes in the electrical activity of the skin, body motion, skin temperature and heart rate to determine when the user might be on the verge of risky behavior like substance abuse. According to reports, it communicates with a smartphone app that prompts users to provide information about potential triggers when the sensor detects a certain stress level and provides timely personalized drug prevention interventions.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
     |
For the last year mobile carriers have entertained a strange notion: content providers should pay for the mobile data their customers consume on operators’ networks. At first, the big internet players seemed to shrug off the suggestion, but carriers may have found their first taker in sports entertainment giant ESPN.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Disney-owned ESPN is negotiating with Verizon Wireless to let the operator’s customers partake in unlimited quantities of ESPN content without incurring any additional data charges. In essence, ESPN would pay Verizon to exempt its content from its data caps.
The Journal reported that no deal is imminent and ESPN isn’t even sure that the economics will work, but the fact that it’s entertaining the idea is significant. It turns the notion of a neutral mobile internet on its head. The hierarchy of the internet is pretty simple: customers pay for access in the form of data plans, leaving internet players free use of the mobile airwaves to deliver their content either for free or as paid services. If ESPN and Verizon strike a deal that hierarchy gets flipped, and there would be consequences.
Mobile operators have chipping away at the principle of net neutrality for years, banning certain apps here and restricting competing over-the-top services there. In Europe, carriers are battling with Google over carriage fees. But in this case, a carrier appears to be challenging net neutrality with the complicity of a content provider. I can understand why ESPN might be eager to take the plunge into subsidizing mobile data. In fact, I’m surprised a big name player like Netflix or Hulu hadn’t done it sooner.
One of the biggest obstacles to widespread video consumption on the mobile internet is overage fees. Who’s going to watch a 3-hour sporting event on their mobile phone or tablet if it drains your monthly data plan in the process? If ESPN wants to make consumers as comfortable using its mobile apps as they are watching its cable programming and using its web services, then it has to get around those data caps.
But there are enormous consequences to such a deal. The biggest and most obvious consequence is that it favors one provider’s content over another. If all access is created equal, then no content has an inherent advantage over another — which is the whole idea behind the wireline network neutrality rules the FCC established in 2010. But if consumers know they can get ESPN’s content without incurring any additional charge, they’ll naturally gravitate toward that content.
There’s an even bigger risk that ESPN’s competitors won’t just get penalized in the eyes of the consumer. Their traffic flow could be penalized as well. Embedded deep within Verizon’s network are policy servers that can distinguish an ESPN packet from any other packet. Not only could Verizon use that technology to exempt ESPN traffic form data plans, it also could use that technology to prioritize ESPN’s traffic from all others. The Journal’s story didn’t mention anything about traffic shaping, but you can bet its high on the list in any negotiation.
I suspect ESPN isn’t the only content provider interested in bargaining with the carriers. And I’m sure the carriers are thrilled at the prospects at an additional mobile data revenue stream. But there are risks for the carriers, too.
Operators have long complained about being reduced to mere dumb pipes, but these kind of subsidy deals would only make their pipes dumber. If all the big destinations on the mobile internet starting paying network fees for the consumer, then operators won’t have much left to sell. Consumers basically would be dealing with the big internet brands to get their content and their access. That leaves carriers selling smaller and smaller mobile data plans to customers who will increasingly gravitate toward those big content providers. Operators will have even fewer ways of distinguishing themselves from their competitors.
What’s more, operators are making the very dangerous assumption that they will always have the upper hand in such negotiations. Last week The New Yorker published a very insightful piece by Tim Wu about the growing threat to net neutrality. While Wu was making his case for wireline neutrality, his points apply to the mobile internet as well:
An important aspect of the Internet’s original design is that many prices were set at zero—what have been called zero-price rules. The price to join the network is zero. The price that users and sites pay to reach others is zero: a blogger doesn’t need to pay to reach Comcast’s customers. And the price that big Web sites charge broadband operators to carry their content is also zero. It’s a subtle point, but these three zeros are a large part of what makes the Internet what it is. If net neutrality goes away, so does the agreement to freeze prices at zero.
If mobile carriers and content providers start negotiating over access the delicate balance of the mobile internet suddenly goes off kilter. Right now it’s teetering toward the mobile operators but that might not always the case. ESPN, Google, Facebook and HBO are enormously powerful brands and their consumer influence is only growing. Meanwhile carriers are becoming increasingly less significant.
It’s not hard to imagine a day when ESPN asserts itself in mobile just as its done in the cable industry, turning the tables on the operators. One day carriers may have to pay ESPN for the privilege of delivering its sports content.
Featured photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Lane V. Erickson; Verizon photo courtesy of Flickr user slgckgc
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
| |
Have you been drooling over the stunning new BlackBerry Q10 since we launched it a few weeks back? Well to soothe your appetite for all things BlackBerry Q10, we’ve highlighted some of our favorite device features in High Definition video with help from our friends at the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team. This is the perfect way (if you ask me) to round up the week and kick the weekend off right.
[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]
[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]
[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]
[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]
There you have it for your viewing pleasure, the BlackBerry Q10 in fine fashion. Let us know which of the above are your favorite features? Or, if you’ve got a fav’ that we missed, tip us below.
Here’s our review of some of this week’s noteworthy links for the data center industry:
Latisys and Ascenty Partner. Latisys announced a strategic partnership with Ascenty, a rapidly emerging metro fiber and data center services provider in Brazil. Under terms of the agreement, Latisys gains access to the Brazilian market and will leverage Ascenty’s Sao Paolo IT Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform and local operations to support its enterprise customers. This strategic relationship expands the addressable market for Latisys in international markets and does the same for Ascenty’s entrance into the US market. Both Latisys and Ascenty build high density data centers that serve as a platform for colocation, managed hosting and cloud services. “There are real challenges that go with international expansion,” said Pete Stevenson, Latisys CEO, based on his significant international experience. “For large IT service providers, it’s a big decision in deciding whether or not to spend capital in a foreign market where the operator has no experience. We think it’s more efficient to manage the execution risk by partnering with a strong local partner so we get speed to market and local operating knowledge for current and future customers that have deployment needs in Brazil.”
Equinix adds AWS Direct Connect to Seattle. Equinix (EQIX) announced the availability of the AWS Direct Connect service in the Equinix International Business Exchange data centers in Seattle (SE2 and SE3). AWS Direct Connect enables customers to connect their infrastructure directly to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Equinix opened the SE3 Seattle data center earlier this year. Equinix customers can also use AWS Direct Connect to access the AWS GovCloud (US) region from all existing AWS Direct Connect locations in North America. ”By leveraging AWS Direct Connect inside Equinix data centers, customers can take advantage of the cost savings and performance benefits of hybrid environments,” said Chris Sharp, general manager, cloud and content for Equinix. ”As we continue to support expansion of the AWS Direct Connect service to new markets, we are removing barriers to adoption and enabling customers to deliver on the promise of cloud computing.”
ViaWest partners with Wayin. ViaWest announced its partnership with Wayin, the online social engagement company. The partnership allows both companies to utilize each other’s IT services and join forces to promote and support the thriving Colorado business community and technology expertise. As part of this partnership, Wayin will implement ViaWest’s KINECTed Cloud service to host its employee and social engagement platforms, Wayin Enterprise and Wayin Hub, thereby connecting users globally in real time. In addition, ViaWest is launching Wayin’s enterprise engagement solution, which enables the human resource department to gather employee feedback and sentiments on various questions, surveys and company initiatives. “With ViaWest’s long history in this region, we know we have a dependable partner to pool resources,” states Tom Jessiman, CEO of Wayin. “ViaWest’s best-in-breed infrastructure powers our applications and we have immediate access to live technical experts when needed. As both companies are Colorado-based, ViaWest shares our commitment to serving the Colorado business community, making the partnership a truly collaborative effort.”
Alibaba Group, China’s largest e-commerce firm, will take a 28 percent stake in digital mapping company AutoNavi Holdings Ltd, part of Alibaba’s move to boost its competitveness by beefing up its product lineup, Reuters wrote. Unlisted Alibaba will invest $294 million to become the largest shareholder in the Chinese-based firm, according to a statement from AutoNavi on Friday which confirmed an earlier report from news portal Sina. The move comes after Alibaba, which competes with Tencent Holidings, acquired an 18 percent stake in Sina Corp’s microblogging service Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, at the end of April.
(Reuters) – Alibaba Group, China’s largest e-commerce firm, will take a 28 percent stake in digital mapping company AutoNavi Holdings Ltd, part of Alibaba’s move to boost its competitveness by beefing up its product lineup.
Unlisted Alibaba will invest $294 million to become the largest shareholder in the Chinese-based firm, according to a statement from AutoNavi on Friday which confirmed an earlier report from news portal Sina.
The move comes after Alibaba, which competes with Tencent Holidings, acquired an 18 percent stake in Sina Corp’s microblogging service Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, at the end of April.
Industry watchers widely expect Alibaba – whose founder Jack Ma steps down as chief executive on Friday – to seek an initial public offering, possibly this year. Some say the company could fetch a valuation as high as Facebook Inc’s $100 billion.
Shares in AutoNavi have risen more than 30 percent since the start of May and stand at $14.77 per share.
Alibaba runs Taobao Marketplace, China’s largest consumer-focused e-commerce website; business-to-business commerce platform Alibaba.com; and Alipay, a PayPal-like online payment platform.
(Reporting by Adam Jourdan, Melanie Lee and Samuel Shen; Writing by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Chris Gallagher)
The post Reuters – Alibaba Takes Stake in AutoNavi Holdings appeared first on peHUB.
With their scantily-clad waitresses and focus on sports TV, Hooters restaurants aren’t normally thought of as the place to bring your mother. This Mother’s Day, however, the restaurant chain is encouraging moms to ditch the fancy restaurants for some free chicken wings.
Hooters this week announced that on Mother’s Day 2013 mothers who bring their children to a Hooters can receive a free (up to $10) entree with the purchase of a drink. No coupon is needed, but each mom must be “accompanied by one or more of her offspring,” according to the Hooters website.
“Kids of all ages are encouraged to invite their mothers to Hooters for special treatment on Mother’s Day,” said Dave Henninger, CMO of Hooters. “The free entrée deal is just one way for Hooters to show its appreciation for hard-working moms and to provide a relaxed atmosphere to enjoy a delicious meal with the family.”
This isn’t the first time Hooters has offered a Mother’s Day deal. For Mother’s Day 2012 the restaurant offered moms 10 free boneless wings.
Bing has added a bit more Facebook integration to its social search features. Now, you can comment on and like Facebook content right from Bing.
“Bing already lets you view Facebook updates and comments from your friends in sidebar, but now you’ll also be able to add your own Likes and comments to your friends’ Facebook posts directly from Bing,” a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews. “This is yet another step in Bing’s efforts to make it easier for people to leverage all of the incredible information across the web and content within their social networks to help them spend less time searching and more time doing.”
“Say you’re a huge Beyoncé fan and are searching Bing to see what she’s up to, such as the latest on her trip to Cuba,” the spokesperson says. “While searching, you see a post in Bing’s sidebar from a Facebook friend who has an extra ticket to the sold out Beyoncé concert this week. With Bing, you can now comment on your friend’s Facebook post in one step, directly in sidebar, and claim the extra ticket. You’ve gone from simply browsing for news to attending the concert in one simple step. With Bing’s social search you can connect with your friends and engage with your social world to get things done – all in one spot.”
Of course none of this applies to the “Bing it On” challenge, which Microsoft just kicked off a new campaign for. The site, which lets you do side-by-side blind comparisons between Google and Bing results, strips out special features from each search engine, including Bing’s Facebook integration and Google’s Knowledge Graph.
Bing continues to be a major partner of Facebook’s, also providing the web search results to Facebook’s Graph Search.
Silicon Legal Strategy has added Coleman Cannon as a senior associate in its San Francisco office. Before joining Silicon Legal, Coleman practiced at Silicon Valley boutique law firm Montgomery & Hansen.
PRESS RELEASE
Silicon Legal Strategy today announced the addition of Coleman Cannon as a senior associate in its San Francisco office, marking the firm’s fourth strategic hire in 2013.
Coleman brings his expertise in advising startups, entrepreneurs, venture capital funds and angel investors in venture financings, M&A transactions and complex commercial agreements to the fast-growing team at SLS. He provides SLS clients with day-to-day counseling across the range of legal issues facing early and growth-stage businesses.
Before joining Silicon Legal, Coleman practiced at Silicon Valley boutique law firm Montgomery & Hansen, LLP, where he counseled technology companies and investors in connection with financing and M&A transactions. Coleman also regularly advised companies on structuring and negotiating various commercial agreements, technology development agreements and strategic transactions.
Coleman began his career in the corporate group at Fenwick & West LLP in Mountain View and San Francisco, where he represented technology companies and leading venture capital firms in financing and M&A transactions and advised startups on day-to-day corporate, commercial, employment and IP-protection matters.
Coleman earned his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his J.D. and M.A. from the University of Minnesota.
“SLS is leading the way in providing entrepreneurs, startup teams and investors with not only top-notch legal advice but also ultra-responsive client service,” said Coleman Cannon. “I’m thrilled to become a part of such a talented team and to continue developing deep relationships with startups, entrepreneurs and VCs in the tech community.”
“Coleman’s strong startup experience and practical, business-minded approach will bring a great deal of value to our rapidly expanding client base,” said Andre Gharakhanian, partner at Silicon Legal Strategy. “We’re excited to be adding yet another elite team member to our practice, and we’re looking forward to continued growth this year.”
About Silicon Legal Strategy
Silicon Legal Strategy is the premier boutique law firm providing targeted, bottom-line-oriented advice to technology startups, innovative entrepreneurs and seasoned investors. Trained at the top firms in Silicon Valley, our attorneys and staff are incredibly passionate about technology and have extensive experience representing early stage companies and investors. We are a known quantity in Silicon Valley, and work with or sit across the table from every major law firm in the area. Perhaps most importantly, we ourselves are entrepreneurs. We truly understand the challenges of a startup — like building and motivating a team, creating repeatable processes to ensure continued customer satisfaction at scale and dealing with infrastructure issues. We face these challenges every day — and as a result, are able to deliver more relevant, bottom-line-oriented advice. Put simply, we actually “get” what entrepreneurs are going through.
The post Silicon Legal Strategy Adds Coleman Cannon appeared first on peHUB.
A quiet startup called RedWave Energy, based just outside of Chicago, has been heads-down working on building prototypes of tiny antennas that can harvest clean power from infrared light, waste heat and eventually visible light. According to a filing, the company, which was founded in January 2011, has just closed on a $1 million round, and the company’s investors include Northwater Capital.
RedWave Energy says on its website that early markets for the technology could be industries like explosives detection and high speed communications. But later down the line, the end goal could be harvesting solar energy in a method that has twice the capacity of current solar cells and panels but at a lower cost.
Nanotechnology is being used to eek out as much efficiency as possible from solar cells and panels. For example, Swedish startup Sol Voltaics says it has developed a low cost way to make tiny nanowires out of the semiconductor gallium arsenide. Sol Voltaics turns these nanowires into an ink, which can be layered onto basic solar panels and boost the efficiency of a standard panel by 25 percent.
But RedWave Energy’s nano scale antennas — or nantennas — work differently than solar cells. Nantennas act as an antenna or collector to absorb light of specific wavelengths and convert it into electricity. The technology has been around for decades, but RedWave Energy is now trying to commercialize nantenna technology licensed from Idaho National Labs, tech from University of Colorado, and is working with manufacturing company MicroContinuum.
RedWave Energy says it will start to talk more about its energy capture technology after it builds its prototype in the second quarter of 2013. We’ve reached out to the company and will update this if we hear back.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
| |
Irvine, Calif.-based uParts Inc. has closed on $2 million in Series A financing. GRP Partners and Fraser McCombs Capital co-led the round. The company has created a cloud-based platform servicing the collision repair industry.
PRESS RELEASE
uParts, Inc., announced closing of its Series-A financing led by GRP Partners, Fraser McCombs Capital and other influential individuals in the automotive industry. The company launched operations from its headquarters in Irvine, California enabling electronic parts procurement, predictable fulfillment and communications through an intuitive cloud-based platform servicing the collision repair industry.
“It is astounding that in the year 2013, the 20th anniversary of the World Wide Web, repair facilities are placing their part orders using 100 year old technologies — the phone & fax machine,” stated Alex Adegan, uParts’ Founder, President & CEO. “Can you imagine faxing a list of your destination cities to airlines, then waiting for them to call back with possible routes, pricing and availability? Our powerful and intuitive platform solves this problem by allowing all part orders to be placed with a single click.”
“uParts is a great company with a unique service offering to the collision repair industry. Collision shops have been slow to embrace technology for parts procurement and typically use phone and fax calls to place their orders, which results in minimal transparency and higher costs. uParts is solving this problem through technology that will transform the industry,” said Steven Dietz, a Partner at GRP Partners. “We look forward to working with uParts and bringing our experience in technology and automotive to help drive long term value.” Mr. Dietz has joined uParts’ Board of Directors.
“It is a testament to our business model that we are able to attract world-class investment firms such as GRP Partners, the largest venture capital firm in Southern California and Fraser McCombs Capital, one of the leading investment firms in the automotive industry,” stated Alex Adegan. “uParts seeks to modernize the collision repair industry through a web-based platform that seamlessly integrates into legacy applications of repair shops and inventory management systems of part suppliers. This improves profits for our repair facilities by lowering costs, reducing labor and streamlining the entire procurement process. We are pleased to have such esteemed investors recognize our potential.”
uParts is deploying its platform nationally by broadening its installed-base of collision repair centers, electronically integrating with more supplier inventory management systems and expanding its feature-set. The Company is in a strong position to capture a significant portion of the $15 billion collision parts industry.
“Alex Adegan is an innovative entrepreneur and a strong leader who, with his team, are disrupting the collision repair industry,” said Chase Fraser, Managing Partner at Fraser McCombs Capital. “We focus our investments in early stage technology companies in the automotive space and believe we can help uParts grow into a consequential player in this enormous industry by leveraging our experience and relationships.”
About uParts.
uParts, headquartered in Irvine, California, is revolutionizing the repair industry through its cloud-based platform where auto parts are systematically identified, effectively located, and electronically procured. uParts automates the entire procurement process for its partners by seamlessly integrating into their legacy applications and providing a transaction and communications portal. uParts stands at the forefront of technology for the auto parts industry, bridging the gap between repair facilities and part suppliers with powerful cutting-edge solutions. uParts’ pledge is to stay independent and unbiased; and to provide the most effective solutions to its repair facilities and part suppliers.
About GRP Partners.
GRP Partners was founded in 1996 with the mission to help entrepreneurs achieve their goals of building big, transformative businesses. The partners of GRP have been involved with many startups over the years, of which 15 stand out companies have achieved exit valuations above $1 billion. We’re proud of this accomplishment and the diversity of teams that we’ve backed – notably that all of our biggest wins have come from outside of Silicon Valley. Our last fund is the single best performing fund in the United States according to the independent industry database, Preqin. (Preqin 2000 Vintage Funds >$100mm)
About Fraser McCombs Capital.
Fraser McCombs Capital is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage technology companies within the automotive space. We are the first and only venture fund that’s managed by automotive entrepreneurs and dealers. We have long standing relationships with Tier 1, 2, and 3 vendors, and connections with leading OEM executives and principals of the largest dealer groups. This allows us to provide key introductions for our portfolio companies.
The post uParts Inks $2M From GRP Partners, Fraser McCombs Capital appeared first on peHUB.
A lipstick ban for Turkish flight attendants has been lifted after a public backlash ensued.
Turkish Airlines says that several low-level managers put together a document saying that red and pink lipstick and nail polish would be banned for all female flight attendants without consulting the management. Chief Executive Temel Kotil responded to the document after receiving several complaints that the airline was moving too close to Islamic values for comfort.
“As you know, some in Turkey are a little bit keen about these issues,” said Kotil. “We are a great global carrier and we know what we are doing. As to the lipstick, we had no problems but somehow low-level managers put together a paper without asking us and that paper leaked to the media and became a big issue.”
Kotil now says that flight attendants are free to wear the lipstick and nail shade of their choice.
“Staff can use the colour they want. This measure was not approved by the hierarchy,” Kotilo said.
While they may not be getting that conservative, the airline has imposed a recent ban on alcohol served during flights.
It’s Friday! That means the work week is ending and it’s time for some data center laughs. This week we’re voting on the “May Flower” cartoon by our artist Diane Alber. Please scroll down and vote!
The caption contest works like this: We provide the cartoon and you, our readers, submit the captions. We then choose finalists and the readers vote for their favorite funniest suggestion.
The winner will receive his or her caption in a signed print by Diane!
For the previous cartoons on DCK, see our Humor Channel.
Venture-backed Box has acquired Crocodoc, a startup that makes HTML5 document rendering and viewing technology. Terms of the deal were not released. The full Crocodoc team will join Box, with Crocodoc co-founder and CEO Ryan Damico serving as Box’s director of platform, the company said. Box is backed by venture firms Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Emergence Capital Partners, General Atlantic, Meritech Capital Partners, NEA, Scale Venture Partners, and U.S. Venture Partners.
PRESS RELEASE
Box today announced the acquisition of Crocodoc, the web’s leading HTML5 document rendering and viewing solution. Crocodoc’s technology will be deeply integrated into the Box experience, and also become a core standalone platform offering, bringing HTML5 document viewing to third party applications across the web and mobile devices. The full Crocodoc team will join Box, with Crocodoc co-founder and CEO Ryan Damico serving as Box’s Director of Platform.
“Content sits at the center of every business, and nearly every business application,” said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box. “Together with Crocodoc, we’re going to transform collaboration on Box and beyond, creating a seamless, beautiful experience for our customers and helping to reimagine the future of documents. We’re going even deeper in the content space, extending Crocodoc’s HTML5 technology to every developer in the world who’s building an application that touches content.”
Founded in 2007, Crocodoc has served hundreds of millions of document previews in the last two years alone. The service powers HTML5 document conversion and viewing for top-tier applications across industries, including Yammer, Facebook, LinkedIn, Edmodo and Blackboard, all of which will continue to be supported. Built on open standards, Crocodoc’s technology for extracting and rendering documents will provide new, sophisticated experiences for Box customers, which include more than 15 million individuals, 150,000 businesses, and major brands such as Gap, McAfee, Schneider Electric and P&G.
“We’re excited to join an amazing team at Box in building the next great enterprise collaboration platform,” said Ryan Damico, co-founder and CEO of Crocodoc. “We want to bring Crocodoc’s technology to as many services and as many people as possible, and joining Box gives us unparalleled reach to accomplish our vision. We’re going to change the way people share and collaborate at work, while continuing to redefine the future of documents on the web and mobile.”
Customers of Box and Crocodoc can expect that:
— Crocodoc’s technology will be deeply integrated into Box’s cloud
content collaboration service, replacing the existing document
previewing experience for all users.
— The Crocodoc API will become a core Box platform offering, powering
HTML5 document viewing for third party applications across the web and
mobile.
— Box will invest significantly in building out Crocodoc’s technology
and ecosystem.
— Box will continue to support all of Crocodoc’s customers.
To experience Crocodoc’s latest technology, visit preview.crocodoc.com.
For more details about the acquisition, visit the Box blog.
About Box Founded in 2005, Box provides a secure content sharing platform that both users and IT love and adopt. Content on Box can be shared internally and externally, accessed through iPad, iPhone, Android and Windows Phone applications, and extended to partner applications such as Google Apps, NetSuite and Salesforce. Headquartered in Los Altos, CA, Box is a privately held company and is backed by venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Emergence Capital Partners, General Atlantic, Meritech Capital Partners, NEA, Scale Venture Partners, and U.S. Venture Partners, and strategic investors salesforce.com and SAP.
The post Box Acquires Crocodoc appeared first on peHUB.
If you recently got your hands on one of the latest and greatest smartphones to hit the market, like the Samsung Galaxy S 4 or the HTC One, you were probably wondering how great it would be to slap the Facebook Home launcher on it. Not really, but it does seem Facebook is hoping owners of those devices might give their Home launcher a try despite the generally poor reception it has received since hitting the market. Although the Facebook Home app still shows its last update as being April 22, 2013, some users have discovered a new screen popping up on their devices asking if they would like to “Use Home Anyway” when they hit the unsupported device screen when launching the app. This appears to be true on both the Galaxy S 4 and the Sony Xperia ZL. Meanwhile, owners of the HTC One don’t even get the unsupported device screen, instead going straight into the launcher.
The changes appear to have surfaced after Facebook held a press conference to announce an update to the main Facebook app and to claim they have 1 million Facebook Home installations. They did not reveal how many of those installations were used for about five minutes before being shut down. The Facebook app supposedly adds a new persistent notification. The changelog in the Google Play Store lists the ability to send stickers, deletion of unwanted comments on your posts, and the ability to get directions, check in or call businesses when on a Facebook Page.
You can use the download links below to access both the Facebook Home launcher or the Facebook app if you want to grab the update.
Google Play Download Link (Facebook Home)
Google Play Download Link (Facebook)
source: Android Central
Come comment on this article: Facebook Home support appears for Samsung Galaxy S 4, HTC One, Sony Xperia ZL
There was a time when you could go into a restaurant in Tampa and get yourself some lion meat tacos. Those days are now behind us. Taco Fusion has reportedly pulled lion from the menu after causing a media stir.
“There’s nothing like eating a predator to make you feel like a predator,” said one patron in the above Fox News report.
“They’re surprisingly tasty,” another said about lions.
Surprisingly, nobody said, “It’s like eating a cat, because that’s what it is.”
As you can see from the video, otter and beaver were also on the menu. It’s unclear whether they’re still serving these meats, but here’s a page from their online menu, which indicates you should still have no problem getting a kangaroo taco:
Also, they deliver.
When Twitter recently posted a job listing for a “head of news and journalism,” it sparked a rash of posts and commentary about how the company was becoming a media entity — until Twitter staffer Mark Luckie tossed cold water on that idea with an interview in which he poo-poohed the notion that Twitter had any plans to be a media company. But Luckie’s response misses the point completely, which is that in every way that really matters, Twitter already is a powerful media entity. Depending on how you see the future of media, that is both good and bad.
There’s no question that some of the reaction to the company’s job posting has strained the bounds of credulity: media gadfly and failed media entrepreneur Michael Wolff, for example, wrote about how the person who became Twitter’s head of news and journalism would have a job “more important than Jeff Zucker’s at CNN,” one that would be like “running a network news division in the 1970s or 80s, the biggest job that there has ever been in news.”
“Given the choice between being the executive editor of the New York Times or being the first Twitter news chief, you’d be well advised to think twice.”
Wolff’s description is more than a little hyperbolic — but at the same time, not entirely untrue. Emily Bell, head of the Tow Center at Columbia University and former head of digital operations at The Guardian, described Twitter recently as “the most significant invention for journalism since the telephone,” and her opinion is shared by many in the media and outside it. For all its flaws, the service that started as a simple messaging app with a weird name has become a critical piece of the real-time information and journalistic infrastructure.
In his interview with PBS MediaShift, Luckie — who got his start doing social media for the Washington Post and was hired by Twitter last year to be part of their growing media-outreach team — downplayed the company’s media ambitions, saying the service wants to be a partner for media companies, and has no intentions of hiring reporters or editors, creating content or doing any of the other things that traditional media entities typically do.
“Twitter doesn’t have ambitions to be a news operation. Because Twitter is so central to what a lot of newsrooms are doing, naturally there’s a lot of hype around this position. No, Twitter has no editorial team. We’re not out there curating news, or saying, “here’s the source that you have to go to.” We’re not writing stories. We’re simply providing a platform for other people to do so.”
But I think Luckie’s response — while perhaps being technically true — misses the much larger point about what we mean when we say “digital-media entity,” and the increasingly powerful role that Twitter and other tools and services are playing in that ecosystem. In a nutshell, much of the power that used to reside with the creators of content has been moving to those who have platforms to disseminate it.
The reality is that hiring journalists and creating content, as valuable as those things are (and I would like to stipulate that they are hugely valuable, before any traditional media fans get out the tar and feathers) is only part of what constitutes a media entity in the digital age. The other factor that is almost as valuable — and perhaps even more so, depending on your perspective — is the ability to aggregate, filter, distribute and monetize that content.
For a long time, traditional media entities like newspapers and TV networks owned both of these aspects of the media ecosystem, but that is no longer the case. Now, the most powerful platforms for distributing — and potentially monetizing — journalism and other kinds of content are not made of paper or TV tubes or coaxial cable, and they are not owned by family-run media conglomerates. They are companies like Twitter and YouTube and Facebook.
It’s true that Twitter in particular has focused on selling itself as a partner for media companies, rather than a competitor, which is one of the reasons why CEO Dick Costolo has tried hard to resist any attempt to paint the service as a media entity. Instead — as with Luckie’s interview — the company would much rather describe how it works hand-in-hand with media outlets, the benefits that accrue from having a strong Twitter presence, etc.
At the same time, however, blog pioneer and digital-media entrepreneur Dave Winer has a point when he repeatedly warns media companies that Twitter is not their friend: in a very real sense, as I’ve tried to argue before, Twitter has built a powerful media company without having to create any of its own content — and every TV network “crawl” that features tweets, and every newspaper story that mentions a reporter’s Twitter handle subtly reinforces that position.
Even the use of Twitter Cards or “expanded tweets” is what I’ve described as a double-edged sword for media companies: it promotes their content, but it also shows an excerpt that might be enough to satisfy many readers — in exactly the same way that Google does with Google News, something that many media companies have criticized and even required payment for.
I am in full agreement with Emily Bell and others who say Twitter is one of the best tools for journalism and media that we have ever seen, and there is no question that it has changed the media environment for the better in a whole range of ways. But let’s not kid ourselves about whether it is a media company or not — it obviously is, in almost all of the ways that really matter, and other media players need to be as clear-eyed about that as possible.
Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Shutterstock / noporn and Flickr users Socialsidekick
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
| |
